Give Me a BreakShortly after we moved into our new building on Tara Street and our eyes had adjusted to the brightness, we began to take notice of our new neighbourhood. Of particular interest was a little shop at College Place, Intimate Lingerie. A strange place for a ladies' shop, some of us thought, a fair walk away from the fashion district.
The window display of mannequins in their scanties completely obscured what may be going on inside. And you couldn't just walk in. You had to make an appointment and ring the bell. One customer at a time, thank you. And to pique our interest further, we occasionally saw men going in there. Jaded journos that we are, the jokey whispers that it was a cover for a sex business began to spread.
Then one brave soul at a desk near mine looked up www.intimate-linger.ie, and made an appointment. She came back with her eyes bright and better posture. "Notice anything different?" We did. She was a new woman. She had a lovely shape and she swore that her new bra had alleviated her back pain.
Ever since, we women in the Features department have been sneaking over to Intimate Lingerie one by one. We've even been known, when we think the guys aren't looking, to sneak into the staff bathroom and give each other peaks of our new lace. Sharing bra news has become our secret little indulgence.
Like a lot of women, I suspect, I've had a strange relationship with my breasts ever since they grew like Topsy when I was a teenager. How can you appear intelligent and capable, as a woman, when your breasts enter the room first? In my younger days in the newsroom, I was excruciatingly dubbed "Home-Tits" (don't think I didn't know, guys). Look at petite-chested Hillary Clinton - the one time she showed the slightest amount of cleavage it prompted an Op Ed in the New York Times. How many truly intelligent, successful women have large boobs? (Even Jordan has had her implants removed and her hair dyed brown now that she's become aauthor.) And then, when you reach a certain age, you sort of half-expect to get breast cancer, especially if your mother or sister had it. So I've never felt comfortable shopping for bras, hate being measured and grab something that looks like it might fit.
When I made my own date with Pauline, who has been in business for 20 years, she greeted me like an old pal. She brought me into the small fitting room, gave me a sensuous wrap of silk (no sleeves, no fastenings, just silk) and ordered me to strip off down to my knickers. This is something you would never do in your average department store. This is something you would never do, full stop.
But there's something about Pauline, with her easy manner and her fitting room door that actually closes - and, after she reassures you that she's seen it all and that her mission in life is to make it look 10 times better, you strip off.
A properly fitted bra can make you look a stone lighter and a decade perkier. Bras that are too small, make you look bigger and droopier. Pauline can make you look bigger, if you want that (no thanks), and says that plastic surgery is a waste of money. Pauline meticulously measures you - all over (she also specialises in made-to-order knickers that do the same for the bottom half as her bras do for the top). After having you try on about a dozen bras, she decrees what style suits you and then produces it in an amazing array of fabrics at prices lower than I've ever seen for the same brands in chain stores. Not that price bothers you once you realise that Pauline has raised your bust-line by several inches. She's so convinced that you'll be transformed, that in the corner of her fitting room there is a bin filled with old bras. And that's where - with ceremony and a little applause from Pauline - you throw the bra you were wearing when you came in (and if you can stop at buying one, then your self-control is massive).
Each client gets a number in Pauline's ledger, so that if you're in Co Kerry or Geneva and need a particular item, she can send it or even have it made. There's something reassuringly old-world European about this in an age of chain-store callousness. She also specialises in bridal and formal fittings and swears that even I, Ms Home-Tits, could with the right scaffolding wear an elegant backless gown if the occasion warranted, a theory I wouldn't mind putting to the test before I get too old.
Husbands and boyfriends, once they have your number, so to speak, can make an appointment and buy you something delicious, knowing that it will fit and be in a colour you like - so no more embarrassing Valentine's Day smalls.
Another reason why we nosy parkers may have seen men going in to Intimate Lingerie is that, well, some men like to wear well-fitting women's underwear and what's wrong with that? Pauline accepts and enhances all of scarred humanity, which is what makes her more than a shop-owner. She deserves several letters after her name as Dublin's cleverest morale-boosting psychologist.
